I don't interpret it as having trouble, but the funds are in "quiet period" with SEC so they are getting everything in order before the funds start to being offered. It appears the opening date has been moved from August 11 to September 10. Look at how long the T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation and Income Fund was announced back in 2017/2018 only to open a year or two ago.

They are delaying till October 1st now.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/806633/000119312525197907/d50711d485bxt.htm
If they are not having problems raising the money, any insights into what "getting everything in order" might involve that would require extra ~ 2 months? I certainly would not want this to drag out as long as the ~ 5 years it apparently took PRCFX...

@dtconroe. I will be curious what your final decision is. I would also like to retract my recommendations. Those two funds - SCFZX and HOSIX - were stellar during the most recent period of higher rates but their yields have been dropping like a rock the past year. They were more suited for the past higher rate environment as was anything CLO related, DHEAX has more of a history but returned over 4% but once during its first six years of existence of mostly lower rates. Same with SEMIX with an even longer history but didn’t come close to 4% in the lower rate environment.
I believe your goal is 4% to 6%. The best advice I have seen in this thread was from @PRESSmUP that if you want to achieve 4% to 6% you have to venture out on the risk scale. Especially if the much lower rate scenario comes to fruition. Many would tell you to venture into emerging market debt which has shined the past many years and their yields haven’t been dropping drastically - think EIDOX and AGEYX which I hold. But definitely not for those who are risk averse and definitely not for you. To be honest 4% to 6% with little to no risk in a much lower rate environment is pie in the sky thinking. Best of luck with whatever you decide.

Junkster, thanks for your participation and suggestions on this thread. Realistically, my goal is for 4% returns since I can't get 4% CDs any longer--I am getting 4.31% with SNAXX money market currently, and I will continue using it as needed, but am not optimistic that MMs can stay above 4% much longer. Many of my current CDs mature in December, so I still have a couple of months to sort through my options.

@dtconroe. I believe your goal is 4% to 6%. Many would tell you to venture into emerging market debt which has shined the past many years and their yields haven’t been dropping drastically - think EIDOX and AGEYX which I hold. But definitely not for those who are risk averse and definitely not for you. To be honest 4% to 6% with little to no risk in a much lower rate environment is pie in the sky thinking. Best of luck with whatever you decide.

However, along those lines, I would recommend you check out APDPX.
For the period from April 2022 to August 2025, Portfolio Visualizer reports an annual return (CAGR) of 9.35%, and:
SD = 2.65%
Sharpe = 1.81
Sortino = 3.94
Max. Draw down = -1.42%
No guarantees, of course, but what's not to like? So far, so good.
Good luck, dt.

@dtconroe. I will be curious what your final decision is. I would also like to retract my recommendations. Those two funds - SCFZX and HOSIX - were stellar during the most recent period of higher rates but their yields have been dropping like a rock the past year. They were more suited for the past higher rate environment as was anything CLO related, DHEAX has more of a history but returned over 4% but once during its first six years of existence of mostly lower rates. Same with SEMIX with an even longer history but didn’t come close to 4% in the lower rate environment.
I believe your goal is 4% to 6%. The best advice I have seen in this thread was from @PRESSmUP that if you want to achieve 4% to 6% you have to venture out on the risk scale. Especially if the much lower rate scenario comes to fruition. Many would tell you to venture into emerging market debt which has shined the past many years and their yields haven’t been dropping drastically - think EIDOX and AGEYX which I hold. But definitely not for those who are risk averse and definitely not for you. To be honest 4% to 6% with little to no risk in a much lower rate environment is pie in the sky thinking. Best of luck with whatever you decide.

someone in a podcast somewhere talked about the machination of creating an ETF and absolutely how much easier it is to do than a mutual fund. but they said that starting a ETF is expensive so unless something has changed, these things have to recoup so much before they just shut em down.
on a other discussion board a product called XOUT grew in popularity. they had a screeen that would remove 10-20% of the SP500. Basically their screen would rule out the worst 20%. people were discussing their methodology and how it was dumb or right but overwelmingly people were positive on the product. it lasted 2 years before getting shut down. #1. nobody put money into it and #2 it performed HORRIBLY.

I have been saying the following for many years.
The only sure way to control volatility is to sell early.

I have experienced several market crash periods, in which several funds with low volatility for years, had dramatic losses during a market correction. In post-crash analysis, derivatives that were using leveraging and speculation, were blamed for the "surprisingly" large losses. When I see relatively new funds, which has large percentage investments in derivatives, I wonder how those derivatives are being used. It is hard to be sure, but often "suspect" leveraging and speculation, but hard to be sure. I tend to avoid them. Below is an AI article that explains that in more detail:
"Derivatives can both increase and decrease market volatility, though the overall impact is complex and depends on factors like market maturity, regulation, and how the instruments are used. While they can enhance stability through risk management and price discovery, high leverage and speculation can lead to amplified price swings and increased volatility. However, derivatives also increase information flow and liquidity, which, in mature markets, can lead to more efficient price discovery and reduced long-term volatility.
Factors contributing to increased volatility
Leverage and speculation:
Derivatives amplify exposure, meaning small price movements in the underlying asset can lead to large gains or losses, contributing to volatility.
Speculative trading:
When derivatives are used for speculation rather than hedging, they can attract destabilizing speculative activity, particularly in less mature markets.
High short-term reactions:
Derivatives can cause prices to react more sharply to new information, increasing short-term volatility.
Factors contributing to decreased volatility
Price discovery:
Derivatives markets facilitate faster price discovery as they incorporate new information, leading to more efficient markets.
Risk management:
By allowing participants to hedge against price fluctuations, derivatives can reduce overall market risk and contribute to stability.
Increased information flow:
The increased information flow from derivatives markets to the spot markets can accelerate this information absorption and reduce volatility.
Market maturity:
In more mature and efficient markets, derivatives are used more for risk management, and their price discovery role leads to more stable prices.
Conclusion
The relationship between derivatives and volatility is not a simple cause-and-effect. Derivatives can act as a double-edged sword: they offer valuable tools for managing risk and improving market efficiency but can also be used in ways that amplify volatility through speculation and leverage. The overall impact depends heavily on the specific market conditions and the regulatory environment."

Hank,
Milken case was 36 years ago, not 66.

Interesting comp - they both returned about just over 5% annualized over the past 10 years, with SDs near 5. OSTIX had slightly lower SD. RSIIX had 79% positive return months vs. 70% for OSTIX.

Would be interesting to know how many of these ETFs disappear within 1 to 2 years. Too many gimmicks.

Great. Thanks. No employer match to 401K. It all goes into a cash account plan. Same effect though, I will not get the full years contribution from them. My main impetus for the Roth build/conversion is to reduce RMDs, as you mentioned. I may also start them before age 73, as they could get out of hand quickly, especially when one of us passes and we have to file as "single".
Related, my circumstances with retirement are very unique. I am the only SME left in my company for this product line, and a very large customer is involved. They have asked me to stay until the last piece of equipment is retired from the customer's network, and until we shut down our lab dedicated to this product. Essentially, they know that I have very little to do and do not care. We have a signed support contract worth millions.
How they handle my leaving will be interesting. If they were to send me packing once the equipment is all gone, they would be on the hook for severance, and I would be entitled to unemployment pay. My guess is that they offer me a position on an associated product line, which I have no interest in pursuing. Thus, causing me to voluntarily retire. Which is fine, this whole situation has been extremely lucrative for myself and my wife.

Great thoughts. I considered switching this year, but I am already bumping against the next tax bracket due to liquidating an inherited IRA in 2025, for which we decided to take the hit now. Our lower income years will start in 2026, when I only work 1/2 a year. And onward, as we only have SS, my wife's small pension and investment income. I will accept the lump sum for my own pension, frozen since 2010.
We do already max out Roths for both of us each year. And we want to start more aggressive Roth conversions in 2027 and onward. That will be 5 years of Roth conversions before RMDs. We are both 66 this year. RMDs are certain to push us into the 24% bracket, so I am looking at future Roth conversions to mitigate that.
I know that going all-in on conversions is the best move, but it is still a bit overwhelming. The choice seems to be limiting the amount of income at the 24% level, as opposed to avoiding it altogether. If we are not careful, we could end up with income in the 32% bracket, eventually.
I was prepared to retire at 62, then came covid and work-from-home. It became so easy that I just stayed on the job. This has led to 5 additional years of Roths, waiting on SS until FRA, 5 more years of pay and 5 more years of maximum 401K contributions.
So, my "compromise" is to double up in the first half of 2026, all into Roth, and start Roth conversions the following year, when I no longer have a salary. I know that I should have started this earlier.
I do appreciate all feedback.

A lot would depend on your tax bracket, age & estimated income in retirement.
If you go for maxing regular 401k, you may gradually convert to Roth IRA in lower income years.
Mixing up may be a good compromise.
And why not start in 2025 - there are few months still to boost 401k contributions.

Yield-curve control is something central banks to, not funds.
Most intermediate-term bond funds manage their yield-curve exposure by following strategies such as barbell approaches (i.e. loading up on ST and LT binds but skipping the belly, when appropriate), rolling-down-the-yield-curve (as years go by, maturity shortens, and if yield-curve is normal, the decline in yield will provide temporary gains - those gains will disappear at maturity), duration control (with futures; PIMCO does this a lot), etc.

There are some rate-hedged bond etfs that might meet some people’s needs if they’re worried about significantly higher interest rates down the road. IGHG (investment grade bonds) AZGD (higher quality bonds)
I’ve been comparing IGHG out to 10 years against various income-oriented OEFs. It has yielded similar returns to BAMBX with just a bit more volatility. That’s probably deceptive because IGHB was saddled with extremely low prevailing rates over most that time. As one concerned about the longer term rate picture I would lean towards either of these over an unhedged fund.

Securitized securities often carry another form of derivative risk, though it is hidden.
A mortgage borrower can usually prepay the mortgage, whether that's to refinance at a lower rate or because the borrower is selling the underlying property to move. That's a form of embedded option. One of the risks it creates is called, not surprisingly, prepayment risk. The risk of a high yielding bond being paid off early.
This embedded option also creates extension risk. Homeowners may be less inclined to pay off their mortgages if rates are going up and they've locked in a lower rate for years.
Investors typically look at duration - the first derivative, or slope, of the bond price vs. market interest rate curve. When looking at bonds with embedded options it can be important to look at the convexity or second derivative of that curve. Prepayment risk and extension risk affect the convexity to the detriment of the lender (bond holder).

M* Fund Category Definitions published 04/2025, available only in 09/2025 (don't know why M* does this every year!).
Changes, April 30, 2025
× Added Global Aggressive Allocation, Global Moderately Aggressive Allocation, Global Moderate Allocation, Global Moderately Conservative Allocation, Global Conservative Allocation, and Miscellaneous Allocation
× Retired Global Allocation and Leverage Net Long
× Revised text definitions of Aggressive Allocation, Moderately Aggressive Allocation, Moderate Allocation, Moderately Conservative Allocation, Conservative Allocation, Global Large-Stock Growth, Global Large-Stock Blend, Global Large-Stock Value, Global Small/Mid Stock
(Domestic allocation/hybrid funds have 75%+ in US securities, global allocation/hybrid funds have (only) 25%+ in foreign securities. This would make most TDFs global, but TDFs are classified separately & there is no mention of US vs foreign securities in TDF descriptions.
Global stock funds have 25-80% in foreign stocks.)
https://pdfhost.io/v/ZA2TxpMej3_MStar_Fund_Categories_042025
Note about PDF Host. M* Methodology/Research documents are now for download only (some years ago, they could be linked). M* Library isn't also easily searchable. But if you know the publication date, you can scroll through reverse-chrono order and locate the document. What I do is upload these documents to FREE PDF Host site and link them. Yesterday, some could open these documents, others could not. I also had problems uploading documents yesterday. So, hopefully, PDF Host works better for posters now.
https://www.morningstar.com/business/insights/research/methodology-documents

@WABAC
I never know what will work, and why I only own funds that are doing well currently.
Never in my life have I owned CLO, but I held this category for about 20 months.
In 2025 it was the first time that I held a big % in international bonds; not anymore.
Any bond fund that I have owned and went down 0.6-0.8%, I sold immediately.
I'm coming up now on about 15 years of investing in bonds, and I've always found funds that don't lose money, unless risk is so high and I'm out.

https://pdfhost.io/v/E..d~yHtX_MStar_MPRS_102024
Response received: The document is missing
If you own a home in an area that is at risk for 100 year floods, it is not safe simply because you haven't had a flood in the past couple of decades that you've owned your home. Likewise, risk to your home does not increase if you're flooded out and have to rebuild.
A quiescent period leads people to underestimate risk. (So intrinsically risky funds like SEMMX come to be regarded as cash alternatives.) Likewise, an isolated instance of bad luck can lead people to overestimate risk.
Risk as represented by M*'s risk score is long term risk. If you're concerned about worst case, pretty much any metric will underestimate that. A meteor might crash into your home tomorrow and do much more damage than a flood. The odds are ridiculously low, but the amount of damage a meteor would inflict is pretty close to worst case, if that's what keeps you up at night.
OTOH, long term conditions (as opposed to recent events) might gradually change. Weather is becoming more unstable and disruptive events are becoming more severe. This sort of change affects long term risk.

Excellent perspective above from @msf. I think we all tend to think in very short time frames and assume things will always be the same. A kind of deceptive ”time-warp” if you will. So I’ve tried to generate a list of key dates for thought. No doubt AI could have done it much better and faster..
Years Since …
Since our planet’s creation 4.5 billion years
Since the North American continent was created 200 million years
Since the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years
Since the Grand Canyon was created 6 million years
Since the first Homo sapiens walked the earth 300,000 years
Since Rome ruled the known world (Pax Romana) 2100 years
Since the signing of the Magna Carta 810 years
Since the Dutch Tulip bulb mania 389 years
Since The United States became a nation 249 years
Since the opening of a U.S. Stock Market 233 years
Since completion of the first transcontinental railroad 156 years
Since the advent of powered flight 123 years
Since the U.S, Federal Reserve was created 112 years
Since the first U.S. commercial radio broadcast 105 years
Since the beginning of The Great Depression 96 years
Since the end of WWII 80 years
Since Fidelity Investments was founded 79 years
Since John Templeton opened his first mutual fund 71 years
Since the first nationwide color TV broadcast 71 years
Since Hawaii became the 50th state 66 years
Since money market funds yielded over 15% 55 years
Since John Bogle founded Vanguard 51 years
Since introduction of the first mass marketed home computer (VIC 20) 45 years
Since Junk Bond King Michael Milken was indicted on corruption charges 37 years
Since CNBC began broadcasting 36 years
Since the first ETF was created 32 years
Since Dow first reached 10,000 26 years
Since the NYC Trade Center Attacks 24 years
Since the first IPhone was introduced 18 years
Since the end of The Great Recession 16 years
Since Donald Trump nominated Jerome Powell to be Federal Reserve Chair 8 years
Since the last Presidential Impeachment 4.5 years
Since the U.S. 10-year treasury bond last yielded under 2% 3 years
Food for thought. Apologies if this seems trite. Thanks to @equaizer for the correction

If you haven't done so already, you may want to read Prof. Snowball's
recent article titled "Thinking more broadly: Bonds beyond vanilla."
https://www.mutualfundobserver.com/2025/09/thinking-more-broadly-bonds-beyond-vanilla/

I own CBLDX. And I might end up with some of the other funds on that list. But I don't know how many of them will perform in a recession since they weren't around for the last one. But there are two. FEMDEX lost -27.6 in 2008 while OSTIX lost -5.5.
So I set up a query on MFO P using the same criteria as Snowball, minus the great owl designation, but adding a minimum age of 18 years so that I could include results from 2008 in the column display.
Nor did I restrict the the results except to exclude muni's and money markets. If the fund met the previous capture and correlation criteria I figured they must have been doing some thing right somewhere in the world.
I wasn't sure how long the funds had to return 4%, so I set it to five years since that was the minimum age he was looking for.
About half of the funds in the article were multi-sector. Only two made my cut. OSTIX lost 5.5. ENIAX lost 28.1.
The only flexible income fund to make the cut was NPSRX, which lost 24.4.
There were six global high-yield funds that made the cut that lost between 16.5 and 28.9.
And the only emerging market fund was the afore mentioned FEMDEX.
Well. We can certainly hope that the next recession won't be as bad as the last recession. And I won't try to predict when it will show up.
It seems to me that focusing entirely on the last five years doesn't account for the risk of recession. I sure hope we don't see rates climb the wall the way they have recently. But if the Fed goes Arthur Burns in 2026, who knows?
Since I have the results, here are the funds that did the best in 2008 along with their maximum draw down in the last five years:
OSTIX -5.5, -9.6
IOBZX -2.9, -8.2
LCCMX -2.5, -17.7
THOPX -2.1, -7.7
CMFIX -0.2, -4
RYSBX +7.2, -18.7
It's enough to have me contemplating ye olde mattress safety deposit.